The present invention relates to an ATM switching system used for broadband ISDN, or more in particular to an ATM switching system suitably used for burst data communication service carried out in Permanent Virtual Connection (PVC) mode.
The communication service of the broadband ISDN is either of two modes; Switch Virtual Connection (SVC) and PVC.
In SVC mode, Virtual Path Identifier (VPI) (VCI) Virtual Channel Identifier is assigned to a call in the ATM switching system at the time of setting (connecting) the particular call to establish a routing path while at the same time securing a bandwidth of the particular call. As a result, in SVC mode, the amount of incoming cells for each output line of the ATM switch is accommodated in a predetermined bandwidth, and therefore the storage capacity of the output cell buffer provided for each output line can be comparatively small.
In PVC mode, by contrast, VPI/VCI is assigned fixedly between specific communication terminals so that the terminal equipment can communicate on a dedicated line whenever required. When the communication is in PVC mode, the bandwidth is not secured for the VPI/VCI unlike in the ATM switching system in SVC mode. In the case where a plurality of burst data in PVC mode directed to the same output line are applied at the same time to the ATM switch, therefore, excessive ATM cells beyond the bandwidth of the output line flow into the buffer memory associated with the output line, and the excess cells beyond the buffer capacity are unavoidably discarded.
The cell discarding can be avoided by two methods. In a method, a sufficient buffer capacity is provided to accommodate a plurality of burst data generated for the same output port. The other method is such that the required bandwidth is secured in each system on the data route each time before transmission of the burst data from the PVC mode terminal.
The burst data produced from the RAM or the hard disc of the terminal equipment may amount to as large as 1 Mbits to 1 Gbits. The method in which a buffer capacity sufficient to accommodate a plurality of burst data is secured in the ATM switch involves a vast amount of buffer memory capacity, and therefore is not of practical value from the viewpoint of memory utilization.
In the method in which a bandwidth is secured each time of burst data transmission in PVC mode, by contrast, the time required for securing the bandwidth is not negligible, and the problem is posed of a reduced communication efficiency of the terminal equipment.
Assuming that an ATM switching system is employed in which control information including call control and bandwidth control are gathered in a processor and various control operations are performed in compliance with commands from the processor. In the case where a broadband ISDN is configured which is capable of transferring data of about 10 Mbits at the bit rate of 150 Mb/s within 100 ms, for example, the time required for securing a bandwidth exceeds the time required for data transfer, so that the overhead time for securing a bandwidth may pose a bottleneck to the burst data communication. This overhead time can be reduced to some degree by improving the processor capacity. This improvement based on the processor capacity, however, has its own limit.
There have been proposed various conventional techniques, such as U.S. Pat. No. 5,124,977 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,184,346 both related to a switching system using a common buffer memory. U.S. Patent No. 5,099,475 related to a switching system in which a high speed line is connected to the input and output links of an ATM switch through a cell multiplexer or cell demultiplexer, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,280,475 related to traffic shaping method and circuit in which a list structure is formed at every virtual path in a common buffer memory to control the reading of cells by a band control table.